In that conference, where he appeared on a panel via Skype, he was asked about the computers he runs. Wright said he was based "in Iceland because of power. It's much, much cheaper in Iceland to run supercomputers" and that the computer he was building was "No. 15 in the top 500 supercomputers globally." (The cost of mining Bitcoin is determined largely by the amount of electricity you need to do the computer processing, and that cost is vastly reduced if you don't need to keep the machines cool — so Bitcoin miners prefer cold climates for their computers. Iceland also has really cheap electricity.)

When asked why he named the machine Tulip, he said that the name was a reference to the "tulip mania" bubble that afflicted the Netherlands in 1637. In the tulip bubble, Holland's tulip bulbs suddenly rose in price as people traded them. Bulbs briefly became more valuable than a year's income for some workers. Prices collapsed again suddenly, wiping out several fortunes. The episode is generally regarded as the first classic case of an economic bubble bursting, and is a frequent reference when people talk about rapid price rises in otherwise shaky economic assets.

Bitcoin price rises — a tradeable currency that is not backed by any asset whatsoever, except itself — is frequently compared to the tulip bubble.

"Most people don't actually realise that the tulip bubble wasn't really a bubble. It was actually a reallocation of contracts, it was made from a contract to a 'swaption,' by changing the contract to a swaption effectively, and by allowing government officials to get out of a contract they collapsed the price."

"Now tulips did actually have a use back then. Tulips kill grass and one of the things they would have done was plant them around castles to keep the grass down and trees down, because they're toxic. If you had a castle back then you wanted a large area to see things. There was actually quite a value in tulips because, they sold billions of them around Europe. ... The volumes were huge. The audience was huge, it was bigger than coffee is now."